03-November-2024

Weekly Press Columns Digest

Weekly Press Columns Digest

KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Economic columnist Dr. Adel Abdul Aziz al-Fakki devoted his column that was published in Al-Sudani daily newspaper of Monday to the cooperatives movement in Sudan, commenting on a recent workshop that the role that could be played by the cooperative societies in controlling the prices and mitigating the cost of living burden.

 

Dr. Fakki said the reactivation of this movement calls for securing funding the cooperatives and supervision of their performances, noting that the process of financing could only be carried out by the banks which require guarantees to get back their money, something that calls for supervisors to control the performance of the societies.

 

In order to explain the enormity of the required funds for the cooperatives movement, the columnist made reference to a statement by the Industry and Trade Minister at the workshop in which he said the country's sugar mills have pledged to allocate 30% of their product to the cooperatives which, according to Fakki, amounts to 180,000 tons worth 4.3 billion dollars.

 

This cost of sugar, adding to it the cost of other commodities, could not be found with the cooperatives and could only be provided by the banks which need guarantees to have their credits be repaid and here comes the need for the supervisors to check the performance of the cooperatives, the columnist stressed.

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Writing in his widely-read column that appeared on Aljareedah daily newspaper of Tuesday, Al-Fatih Jabrah lashed hard on Islamist Al-Tayeb Mustafa for accusing him of lying in a previous column that his militant Islamist colleague Abdul Hay Yusuf has received five million dollars from former President Omar al-Beshir for Taybah TV channel owned by Abdul Hay.

 

Jabrah stressed that what he wrote was not a lie but was an acknowledgement by deposed Beshir in court and could be found of the records of the court that is currently trying Beshir and, moreover, Tayeb could ask his nephew (Beshir) about the matter.

 

Mustafa was defending in a press column his Islamist colleague over an incident he did not witness and has thus committed falsity, supporting vice instead of virtue, a crime that is against the Islamic principles, the columnist charged.

 

He demanded an apology by Mustafa on the same newspaper that carried the lying accusation and in this case he would forgive him, otherwise, he would file a lawsuit against him. 

 

Jabrah, at the outset, harshly attacked the Islamists and followers of the defunct regime who he said nowadays took to attacking anyone that differed with them and spoke about their corrupt rule and labeling their opponents as "adherents of secularism, republicanism, atheism and communism, although none of those has produced a single thief, while during the years we lived under their detestable rule, the Islamists proved to act against the Islamic teachings by stealing, committing adultery during the fasting month of Ramadan, selling public property and unjustified murder."

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Alyoum Altali daily newspaper of Wednesday carried a column by Mohamed Abdul Gadir on the 55th anniversary of the popular revolution of October that overthrew the military regime of General Ibrahim Abboud in 1964.

 

The columnist noted that the October popular revolution, the first of its kind in both Arab and African countries, was successful as a result of the unity of the political parties to the extent that until now no single political party or political leader could claim to have led the upheaval alone and that the same unity element was also behind the success of April popular revolution that toppled then President Gaafer Nimeiry.

 

However, he went on, the democratic regimes that followed both popular revolutions were terminated by the differences among the political parties over power struggle, recalling that the democratic regime that followed October uprising came to an end in May 1969 by a military coup d'état led by Marshal Nimeiry following the banning of the Communist Party by the other political parties. The same scenario was repeated in June 1989 when another coup d'état, an Islamic one led by General Omar al-Beshir, ousted the democratic regime of Sadek al-Mahdi, Abdul Gadir said.

 

He therefore called for a unity of rank of the Sudanese political parties for protecting the present transitional authority and the upcoming elected multi-party democratic regime and to avoid the differences so as to avert occurrence of the vicious circle of a new military takeover.

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The native administration is the topic of discussion in a column written by Abdulla al-Sheikh published by Akhir Lahza daily newspaper of Thursday pointing out the important role played by this non-governmental administration was due to the high wisdom and apposite opinion the leaders of this system possessed.

 

Those usually tribal leaders of Sheikh, Omdah and Nazir ranks (depending on the size of the geographic area one of them oversaw), exercised powers of extrajudicial arbitration and jurisdiction in local disputes between members of the community that was predominantly illiterate, besides collecting taxes for the government; but this role shrank when literacy spread, particularly among the youth population, Sheikh (the columnist) said.

 

The last nail in the coffin of this system was hammered in by the military rule of Marshal Gaafer Nimeiry (1969-85) who dissolved it, but the present military attempted to revitalize the native administration by gathering about 10,000 of those tribal leaders in the first days of the December 19 popular revolution in the Sudanese capital to use against the civilian Freedom and Change Forces (FCF), said Sheikh, adding that this attempt was unsuccessful as those leaders were originally supporters of such civil political parties as the National Umma and Democratic Unionist parties.

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Columnist Osman Mirghani warned in his Altayyar daily newspaper of Saturday against what he called a current concern by the state organ with minor political issues, neglecting the development ones which were the target of the popular revolution.

 

What is required is a comprehensive national programme that would address the pre-requisites of building a modern state in the Sudan, not only limited political agenda only designed for reaching the date of elections at the end of the transitional period, Mirghani said.

 

He added that an agreed upon 10-year strategic plan for 2020-2030 should cover political, economic, social and cultural tracks, warning against paying concern with only management of the crises because he said years would pass and the state would discover that it has only succeeded in coexisting with, not resolving, those crises.

 

The revolution which has astonished the world must produce a modern state, not an old one in a new costume, said the columnist, calling for adoption of a new course of action and a new ideology.

 

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MAS/AS

 

Sudanow is the longest serving English speaking magazine in the Sudan. It is chartarized by its high quality professional journalism, focusing on political, social, economic, cultural and sport developments in the Sudan. Sudanow provides in depth analysis of these developments by academia, highly ...

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